I was the Napoleon of crime. It was Sherlock Holmes who first called me that and I will be immodest enough to admit that I was rather pleased by the description. Unfortunately, as the year of 1890 drew to its close I had no idea that my exile on St Helena was about to begin. The few scant details that he relates about my life are essentially correct and it is not my intention to expand on them very much here. I was indeed one of two boys – twins – born to a respectable family in the town of Ballinasloe, County Galway. My father was a barrister but when I was eleven or twelve years old he became involved with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and, knowing the danger into which this might place him, determined that my brother and I should be sent to England to complete our education. I found myself at Hall’s Academy in Waddington where I excelled at astronomy and mathematics. From there I went to Queen’s College, Cork, where I studied under the great George Boole and it was with his guidance that, at the age of twenty-one, I published the treatise on Binomial Theorem which, I am proud to say, caused quite a stir across Europe. As a result, I was offered the Mathematical Chair of a university which was the scene of a great scandal that was to change the course of my life. I do not intend to elucidate on the precise nature of that scandal, but I will admit that I am not proud of what took place. Although my brother stood by me, neither of my parents ever spoke to me again.
But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood …
That was what Holmes – or Watson – wrote but they were quite wrong and my parents would have been mortified had they read it. They were, as I have said, respectable people, and there was never a hint of misconduct in my long family tree. My readers may find it hard to accept that an ordinary teacher might decide, quite deliberately, to break out into a criminal career, but such I assure you was the case. At the time, I was working as a private tutor in Woolwich, and although it is true that a number of my students were cadets from the Royal Military Academy which was close by, I was not quite the ‘army coach’ that has been stated. One of these, a pleasant, hard-working man by the name of Roger Pilgrim, had first accrued gambling debts and had thence fallen in with a group of swells. He came to me one evening in great distress. It was not the police that he feared – his own gang had turned on him over a small sum of money which they believed he owed and Pilgrim quite seriously believed he would be torn limb from limb. I agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to intercede on his behalf.
It was then that I made the discovery that was to change my life a second time, viz., that the criminal underclass – the thieves, burglars, counterfeiters and conmen who were the plague of London – were all unremittingly stupid. I thought I would be afraid of them. As things turned out, I would have felt more anxiety walking through a field of sheep. I saw at once that what they lacked, crucially, was organisation and that as a mathematician I was ideally suited to the task. If I could bring the same discipline to their nefarious activities that I could to binomial coefficients, I would create a force that could take on the world. I will confess that although it was the intellectual challenge that first interested me, I was already thinking of personal profit for I was growing tired of living hand to mouth.
It took me a little over three years to achieve my goals and perhaps one day I will describe that process, although it is, frankly, unlikely. Apart from any other considerations, I have never been one to blow my own trumpet. Anonymity has always been my watchword – after all, how could the police pursue a man whose very existence was unknown to them? I will merely say that Roger Pilgrim stayed with me and provided the physical support – which is to say, the persuasion – that was occasionally required although we very seldom resorted to violence. Not for us the heavy-handed methods of Clarence Devereux and his gang. We became close friends. I was the best man at his wedding and still remember the day his wife gave birth to their first child, Jonathan. And so, we arrive at the beginning.
As the year 1890 drew to a close, I was very comfortable and confident that my career would continue to thrive. There was not a felon in London who did not work for me. There had, inevitably, been bloodshed along the way but things had settled down and all that was behind me. Even the meanest and most feeble-minded criminals had come to appreciate that they were better off working under my protection. Yes, I took a goodly share of their profits but I was always there when circumstances turned against them, readily paying for their bail or defence. I could also be very useful. A cracksman searching for a fence? A swindler desirous of a false referee? I brought them together, opening doors in more than one sense.
There was, of course, Sherlock Holmes. The world’s greatest consultant detective could not fail to come to my attention but curiously I never gave him much thought. Did I have anything to do with the absurd Musgrave ritual or the equally unlikely Sign of Four? What did I care about the marriage of Lord St Simon or that trivial scandal in Bohemia? I know Watson would have you think that we were great adversaries. Well, it helped his sales. But the fact was that we were operating in quite separate fields of activity and, but for a single occurrence, we might never have met.
That occurrence was the arrival of Clarence Devereux and his entourage – Edgar and Leland Mortlake and Scotchy Lavelle. Everything that I told Athelney Jones about them was true. They were vicious criminals who had enjoyed spectacular success in America. What was not true, however, was my assertion that they intended to join forces with me. Quite the contrary, they came to England to stamp me out, to take over my criminal empire, and in the months that followed, they acted with a speed and violence that took me quite by surprise. Using the foulest methods, they turned my followers against me. Anyone who protested, they killed – always bloodily, as a warning to everyone else. They also used police informers against me, feeding information both to Scotland Yard and to Holmes so that I found myself fighting a war on three fronts. So much for honour among thieves! Perhaps I had become over-confident. Certainly I was unprepared. But I will say this much in my own defence: they were not gentlemen. They were Americans. They paid not the slightest attention to the rules of sportsmanship and civility to which I had always deferred.
Well, I have already said that criminals are stupid. To that I should have added that they are also self-serving. Very quickly, my associates realised which way the wind was blowing and ‘fell in line’, as I believe the saying goes. One by one, my closest advisors abandoned me. I cannot blame them. I think, had I been in their shoes, I would have done the same. At any event, by the start of April I found myself, unbelievably, a fugitive. My one advantage was that Devereux had no idea what I looked like and could not find me. He would have killed me if he had.
At this point, I had just three close allies. All of them have already appeared in this narrative.
Peregrine, Percy or Perry was perhaps the most remarkable of the three. Although almost impossible to believe, he had begun life as the youngest son of the Duke of Lomond and would have been entitled to a comfortable, even a cosseted, life had he not taken violent exception to the private school in Edinburgh where he had been sent at the age of seven. The place was run by Jesuits who gave their students the Bible and the birch in equal measure and, after one week, Perry ran away and came south to London. His despairing parents began a nationwide search and offered a huge reward for information as to his whereabouts, but a boy who is determined not to be found will not be, and Perry disappeared cheerfully into the metropolis, sleeping under arches and in doorways in the company of the thousands of other children who somehow managed to scratch a living in the capital. For a short while – and there is a certain irony in this – he was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the gang of street urchins who attended upon Sherlock Holmes, but the wages were derisory and anyway, Perry had quickly discovered that he preferred crime. I am deeply fond of him but I will admit that there is something quite disturbing about him, perhaps a result of cross-breeding within the Lomond family. By the time I met him, he was eleven ye
ars old and had already, to my knowledge, killed at least twice. He killed more frequently after I had taken him into my service – there was no preventing it – and I must add, somewhat regretfully, that his bizarre bloodlust could occasionally be useful to me. Nobody ever noticed Perry. He seemed to be nothing more than a blond, rather plump child, and with his fondness for disguises and theatricality he could inveigle himself into any room, any situation. He found his métier with me. I will not say that I became a second father to him – it would have been far too dangerous as Perry had a loathing of authority figures and would gladly have murdered the first. But we were, in our own way, close.
I need write less about Colonel Sebastian Moran. I have described him already and Dr Watson will provide any further information you may require. Educated at Eton and Oxford, a soldier, gambler, big-game hunter and, above all, sniper, Moran was my first lieutenant for many years. We were never friends. That simply was not his way. Gruff in manner and prone to almost uncontrollable fits of rage, the wonder is that he stayed with me for as long as he did and, in truth, he only did so because I paid him handsomely. He would never have joined Devereux for he had a strong antipathy towards Americans – indeed, to many foreigners – and that marked him out from the start. If I remind you that his weapon of choice was a silenced airgun, invented by the German mechanic Leopold Von Herder, you will perhaps be able to work out his role in this tale.
Finally, I come to Jonathan Pilgrim, the son of my old student, Roger. His father and I had gone our separate ways – he to an early retirement in Brighton. He had become a wealthy man during his time with me and his wife had been afraid for him from the start, so I was hardly surprised and only a little saddened when he begged leave to part from me. There are all too few friends in the life of a master criminal, too few people one can trust, and he was both. However, we corresponded occasionally and sixteen years later he sent me his son who had grown up as wayward as his father had once been. Quite what his mother made of this strange apprenticeship I will never know but Roger had recognised that Jonathan would turn to crime with or without me and had decided that with me was the better option. He was an extraordinarily good-looking boy with a freshness and an openness that one could not help but like, and to this day I regret the fact that, in my desperation, I allowed him to infiltrate Devereux’s inner circle. Everything that you have read in this narrative, everything I have done, began with his murder.
Never has a man felt more alone than I, when I came across Jonathan’s body in Highgate, where we had arranged to meet so that he could provide me with whatever fresh information he had gathered. The manner of his death, the way he had been bound and then executed, disgusted me. As I knelt beside him, with tears streaming from my eyes, I knew that Clarence Devereux had outmanoeuvred me and that this was as low as my fortunes could fall. I was finished. I could flee the country. I could do away with myself. I could not endure any more.
I gave way to this foolishness for perhaps five seconds. It was replaced by a fury and a thirst for revenge that entirely consumed me – and it was at that exact moment that a plan formed in my head so daring and unexpected that I was certain it must succeed. You must remember my circumstances. I had Colonel Moran and I had the boy, but apart from them there was nobody I could call upon for help and the three of us were hopelessly outnumbered. All my former associates had been turned against me. Worse still, I had no way of finding Clarence Devereux for, like me, he had never revealed himself. Thanks to Pilgrim, I had learned about the Mortlakes and their club, the Bostonian. I knew, however, that none of the gang would ever betray their leader to me. Pilgrim had also directed me to Scotchy Lavelle who lived close to where the body had been found but he was an extremely cautious man. His house was like a fortress. It might be possible to kill him but I needed to reach him, to get from him the information that would allow me to bring down the rest of the gang.
Suppose, then, that I were to draw Scotland Yard and all its resources to my cause? Was it possible that I could somehow use them to defeat my enemy, working as it were from inside with neither party aware of who I was? The greatest mathematical insights – the diagonal argument, for example, or the theory of ordinary points – have always come in a flash. So it was with my idea. I would have to die in a way that was memorable and unarguable but then I would return, in another guise. I would both use the Metropolitan Police to do my work for me and conceal myself within them, seizing any opportunity that came my way. Clearly I could not pretend to be a detective myself. It would be too easy to check my credentials. But suppose I had come from far away? Almost at once my thoughts turned to the Pinkerton Agency in New York. It made complete sense that they would have followed Devereux and the others to England. At the same time, the well-known lack of co-operation between the two agencies would play into my hands. If I presented myself with the right documents and files, surely no one would suspect me or question my right to be there?
First, I placed certain papers – including the address of the Bostonian – in Jonathan Pilgrim’s pockets. They were there for the police to find. Next, I prepared to die. It almost amused me to rope Sherlock Holmes into my scheme but who better to help me take my last bow on the stage? Holmes was almost certainly unaware that he had been helped in his investigations by Clarence Devereux. Three times – in January, February and March – he had crossed my path and had, I knew, prepared extensive notes on my affairs which he would eventually deliver to the police. At the end of April, I called on him at his rooms in Baker Street. My one fear was that he would have learned how desperate things had become for me and how little power I really had, but fortunately this was not the case. He accepted me for what I pretended to be, a vengeful and dangerous foe, determined to have him removed from the scene.
I should also mention that I had taken some elementary precautions before I risked meeting Holmes face to face and I am surprised that he did not perceive this for he knew how important to me my anonymity had always been. A wig, a little whitening, hunched shoulders and shoes designed to give me extra height … Holmes was not the only master of disguise and it delights me that the description of me which he gave to Watson – ‘extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve’ – was entirely inaccurate. I could not know then how things would play out and it has always been my habit to prepare for every eventuality.
I do not need to repeat our words. Dr Watson has got there first. I will simply say that, by the end of our conversation, Holmes was in fear of his life and that I followed it up with several attacks upon him – all of them designed to frighten, not to kill.
Holmes did exactly as I hoped. He sent Inspector Patterson a list of my former colleagues, not knowing that they were all, by now, employed by Devereux, then fled to the Continent. Along with Perry and Colonel Moran, I followed, waiting for the opportunity to put the first climax of my scheme into action. It came at Meiringen, at the Reichenbach Falls.
I guessed that Holmes would have to visit that dreadful place. It was in his nature. No tourist, not even a man in fear of his life, could pass by without gazing down at the rushing waters. I made my way there ahead of him, walked the narrow path and knew at once that I had the setting I required. It would be perilous. Of that there could be no doubt. But I like to think that only a mathematician could survive what might seem to be a suicidal plunge into the rapids. Who else could so carefully calculate all the necessary angles, the volume of the water plunging down, the exact speed of descent and the odds of not drowning or being smashed to pieces?
The next day, when Holmes and Watson set out from the Englischer Hof, everything was in place. Colonel Moran was concealed, high above the falls, a necessary safeguard should anything go amiss. Perry, who had perhaps thrown himself too strenuously into the part, was disguised as a Swiss lad. I myself was waiting on the shoulder of the hill nearby. Holmes and Watson arrived and Perry produced the letter, supposedly written by the landlord, summoning Watson back to the hotel. Holmes was
left alone. It was at this point that I presented myself and the rest, one might say, is history.
The two of us exchanged words. We prepared for the end. Do not think for a minute that I was entirely sanguine about the chances of my success. The water was pouring down ferociously and there were jagged rocks all around. Had there been any alternative, I would gladly have considered it. But I must seem dead, and with that in mind I naturally permitted Holmes to write his letter of farewell. I was a little surprised that he felt a need to record what was going to happen but then I had no idea that we were both, in fact, preparing to fake our own deaths, a situation which in retrospect strikes me as slightly bizarre. However, it was his testimony that I most needed and I watched him leave the note close to his alpenstock before we squared off and began to grapple like a pair of wrestlers at the London Athletic. This was, for me, the most disagreeable part of the experience for I have never been fond of human contact and Holmes reeked of tobacco. I was really quite grateful when he brought his bartitsu skills to the fore and threw me over the edge.
It nearly killed me. Such a strange and horrible experience to be plummeting endlessly as if out of the sky and yet to be surrounded by water, barely able to breathe. I was blind. The howl of the water was in my ears. Although I had worked out exactly how many seconds it would take me to reach the bottom, I seemed to hang there for an eternity. I was vaguely aware of the rocks rushing towards me and actually touched them with one leg, although very lightly, for otherwise I would have shattered the bone. Finally, I plunged into the freezing water, all the air was punched out of me and I was swirling, turning, almost being reborn in a sort of life after death. Somewhere within me I realised that I had survived but could not break surface in case Holmes was watching. I had instructed Colonel Moran to keep him busy, to distract his attention by hurling small boulders in his direction, and it was while this was happening that I swam to the shore and crawled out, shivering and exhausted, into a place of concealment.